Please vote no on HR 2749. This is yet another bill which will place an extreme burden on small farms and give corporate agriculture a free pass. It is another example of what has gone wrong with our government when they seek to "protect" the general public from the ability to grow or purchase their food locally rather than buy from corporate ag.
No doubt food giant Monsanto, as well as a host of others, are behind this bill which will do nothing to protect the general public from food-borne illness, while it drives small farmers and artisan food production out of business. The annual registration fee of $500 alone is enough to make many farms cease to operate . That, coupled with severe fines and civil and criminal penalties, as well as random warrantless searches of business records, show this to be a bill more suited to a corporate fascist dictatorship that seeks to control the food supply. Take a lesson from the Soviet Union and its takeover of farming during the communist era. Millions of people starved and froze to death. If small farms are driven under, this will likewise occur here in the USA and the blood of the people you supposedly serve will be on your hands.
In these hard economic times we can ill afford to have such a bill pass. The main culprit in food-borne illness is the centralization of the food supply, which has the capacity to sicken or kill tens of thousands of people at a time. Locally produced food purchased directly from the farm provides an instant traceback for the people who purchase from them.
We don't need or want the legislation proposed so that agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Tyson/ Perdue, Smithfield, Cargill and ConAgra can offshore our food production and import disease and food-borne illness from other countries. We don't want the producers of open pollinated heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables and heritage livestock driven under by rules and regulations which will eliminate the genetic diversity of the food supply. Please do not allow this bill to become law.
No doubt food giant Monsanto, as well as a host of others, are behind this bill which will do nothing to protect the general public from food-borne illness, while it drives small farmers and artisan food production out of business. The annual registration fee of $500 alone is enough to make many farms cease to operate . That, coupled with severe fines and civil and criminal penalties, as well as random warrantless searches of business records, show this to be a bill more suited to a corporate fascist dictatorship that seeks to control the food supply. Take a lesson from the Soviet Union and its takeover of farming during the communist era. Millions of people starved and froze to death. If small farms are driven under, this will likewise occur here in the USA and the blood of the people you supposedly serve will be on your hands.
In these hard economic times we can ill afford to have such a bill pass. The main culprit in food-borne illness is the centralization of the food supply, which has the capacity to sicken or kill tens of thousands of people at a time. Locally produced food purchased directly from the farm provides an instant traceback for the people who purchase from them.
We don't need or want the legislation proposed so that agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Tyson/ Perdue, Smithfield, Cargill and ConAgra can offshore our food production and import disease and food-borne illness from other countries. We don't want the producers of open pollinated heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables and heritage livestock driven under by rules and regulations which will eliminate the genetic diversity of the food supply. Please do not allow this bill to become law.
